Presence sensing automation routine

[val7]

Hi

I set up Google Home with the presence sensing for home and away automation . I have lighting and fans which I can control with all other routines ie. the other routines can "see" and add these devices and can control these upon being triggered.

Currently, the presence sensing will switch on/off my lighting when I'm home/away because I can add the lighting device to "action". However, the "action" better doesn't offer me to choose my fans? Fans are however visible and can be added under any other non presence sensing routine. Why is this so?

Further I want my light to turn on/off only during certain time of day (like evenings) when I'm home/away. I don't need them to turn on when I get back home during daytime. 

Why is presence sensing so limiting? I would have assumed these are pretty basic stuffs.

[NestConnect-IT]

Hi, I may have an effective solution for this problem.

I can confirm that you can only use the Home and Away routines to control devices such as lights or other Nest devices.

The ability to create script-based automations has recently been introduced.

This option may not be available for all languages.

I use the Italian version from Italy, and in my case this option is available.

To access this feature you must participate in the beta preview program in the Google Home app.

Next you need to sign in to Google Home for the web (home.google.com)

On this page go to the "automations" section, and press the button to add a new automation.

 

With the Assisted Scripting feature you can describe what you would like to do and an automation will be generated.

For lights, I attach my automation that I personally use in my home.

I created this automation to ensure that when the first person in the household arrives home from sunset to sunrise, the set lights are turned on.

Potentially you can also decide to include other appliances/devices and the actions they must perform.
Try entering this series:


metadata:
name: Welcome lights at night
description: Turn on lights when the first home member arrives after dark
automations:
- starters:
- type: home.state.HomePresence
state: homePresenceMode
is: HOME
condition:
type: time.between
after: SUNSET
before: SUNRISE
actions:
- type: device.command.OnOff
devices:
- (name of the light to be turned on)
- (name of the light to be turned on)
- (name of the light to be turned on)
- (name of the light to be turned on)

on: true

After setting everything, validate the automation and activate it.

Please note that only home members who have the beta (preview program) of the Home app can see and edit these types of automations.

For more info, visit: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/13323253?hl=it

Let me know if it was helpful!

[PiX]

Hi, I'm a bit disappointed by what google home presents to us while using presence sensing. That event is only usable in away / home hardcoded routine. No way to use it on another routine.

Worse, a simple routine can activate a scene (same for scripts or scenes from home assistant). But the hardcoded away / home routine can't can't trigger a scene! This is a joke, or just marketing story...

For your fan, as displayed I think, only certain devices are compatible with those hardcoded routines.. Google home is yet very limited. But I really think they blocked an easy way to let us control from presence sensing to customized things like home assistant.

I still have to try something : virtual switch exposed from HA to Google home, and use away / home routine to trigger on or off that switch back to HA where I will then run my script. But why are they preventing us to run a simple scene from hardcoded routines? 

By the way, I try to do that in order to avoid adding my girlfriend's phone location directly into HA. Coz I believe that I would then see all her locations where I don't want / need to track that. So to use GPS presence sensing, I can delegate that to Google home (which just don't tell me anything but trigger well the away or home hardcoded routine) and then upstream that to HA where you can just do what you want.